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Joanna Wright and Tara Cummings

When the New Bethany Home for Girls in Arcadia, Louisiana opened in 1971, the religious reform school was known as a safe haven for “wayward girls.”

Over the next three decades, law enforcement officials repeatedly investigated claims of physical and psychological child abuse at the school. Girls routinely ran away, and state officials raided the compound twice and removed children from the home.

Joanna Wright was 16 years old when she first arrived. She had been sexually abused at home and hoped the school would be a refuge. But when she got there, she was raped by the man in charge of the school.

For years, Joanna thought she was the only one. It wasn’t until years later that she connected with other former students, including Tara Cummings, who survived physical and psychological abuse while at New Bethany.

At StoryCorps, they shared difficult memories from their childhoods. Joanna begins their conversation.

In 2014, a group of women — including Joanna and Tara — came forward to say they were raped and abused at the school.

After a year-long investigation, a grand jury declined to indict the founder of the school. He died the following month.

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Joanna Wright (JW) and Tara Cummings (TC)

JW: I thought something was really wrong with me, that I must be a really bad person because this keeps happening to me in life. I started to think, ’How could I dismember my body and spread the pieces around so that God couldn’t find me and put me back together to punish me?’

TC: I used to wish that I would come back as a cotton ball or a Coke can, completely inanimate so I could feel nothing. Who was the first person that you told?

JW: My father.

TC: What did he do?

JW: Had me take a lie detector test. I always wondered, What do people see in me that makes them think it’s okay to abuse me? And that was something that I carried even into adulthood. I wonder what I would have been like. I think I would’ve been a free spirit. But it put a fear in me that I–I’ve never shaken. I don’t know that I ever will. You know, I always thought, There has to be other girls, I can’t be the only one. And so I’ve always blabbed about it, but you managed to keep it a secret. And I–I guess I’ve wondered why?

TC: I was a really good liar. Always being the preacher’s kid and putting on a perfect front. I think I was trying to move on. But to get out of the hiding was a game changer for me. And I learned that from you. I know you don’t believe in divine path, but I was at a fork in the road. And knowing you has changed my life.